In some respects yes. In my mind the debugger is a last resort tool, when other feedback loops don't provide enough information. Where it really shines though

In some respects yes. In my mind the debugger is a last resort tool, when other feedback loops don't provide enough information. Where it really shines though, is when debugging rather terrible spaghetti like code, where a debugger really helps by allowing you to step through code, and see the whole state change. I guess most cases are in between the ideal and that. Another nice thing is to be able to set a breakpoint and then actually mess with the variables at that point. That actually tightens the feedback loop because you can test out different states without having to go back, edit, and run the code path again.